Census data: 78 counties shifted to majority-minority since 2000

From the nation’s capital to South Florida to southern California, 78 counties across the country lost their white majority from 2000 to 2013, census data show.

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of the data, the counties are concentrated on the East Coast, the Southeast and in California, while relatively few are in the country’s middle sections.

A total of 266 majority-minority counties with at least 10,000 residents account for 31 percent of the U.S. population, according to Pew.

Minorities are now the majority in 19 of the 25 most populous counties in the country, according to Pew. Those now include Clark County, Nev., which surrounds Las Vegas; Broward County, Fla., which is Florida’s second-largest; and Sacramento County, Calif., home to the state’s capital.

Some of the shifts have been dramatic: Broward, which includes Fort Lauderdale, went from 58 percent white to 40 percent white. Mecklenberg County, which includes North Carolina’s largest city, Charlotte, went from 61 percent white to 49 percent white. Sacramento County dropped from 58 percent white to 47 percent white.

Pew noted that two counties that are currently just barely majority white, Tarrant in Texas and Wayne in Michigan, could soon become majority minority. Those counties contain the cities of Fort Worth and Detroit, respectively.

The census numbers show the increasing diversity of America’s suburban counties. Middlesex County, N.J., for example is home to more than 100,000 Indian-Americans, one of the largest concentrations in the country.

Montgomery and Charles County, Md., and Prince William County, Va., are densely populated parts of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and they’re now majority-minority.

A cluster of southern California counties surrounding Los Angeles have become majority-minority, including Santa Barbara, Ventura, Orange and Riverside. San Diego County also joins that list.

Farther north, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties, part of the San Francisco Bay area, shifted as well. Stanislaus County, in California’s heavily agricultural Central Valley, turned majority-minority, as did Yolo County, immediately to the west of Sacramento.